NEW DELHI, July 17 -- The Parliament's Monsoon Session, which starts on July 21, will map a visionary legislative agenda under the Ministry of Home Affairs with the agenda of intensifying social justice, modernising governance, and righting historical wrongs of exclusion. One of the primary proposals is the long-awaited Readjustment of Representation of Scheduled Tribes in Assembly Constituencies of the State of Goa Bill, 2024-a long-overdue move towards balanced political representation of the state's tribal population.
The Bill seeks to correct in the Lok Sabha the error of not providing reserved seats for scheduled tribes in the 40-seat Legislative Assembly of Goa. While the Gawda, Kunbi and Velip tribes were included as scheduled tribes in 2003, no delimitation exercise was done subsequently to make room for their inclusion. This has led to their political marginalisation, even though they are estimated to form between 12 and 15 percent of the population of the state. For more than two decades, bodies like the Goa Tribal Welfare Association have called for constitutional remedy under the Articles 330 and 332 of the Constitution, which enjoin the principle of proportional representation for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in legislatures.
As a measure to remedy this disparity, the Bill stipulates a two-step procedure. Initially, there will be a detailed census of the population of STs in Goa through up-to-date digital tools so that it is accurate at the micro level. The information gathered will subsequently be utilised by the Election Commission to recast Assembly constituencies, which can lead to the creation of three to four reserved seats for Scheduled Tribes. This action follows the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in K. Krishna Murthy v. Union of India, which acknowledged delimitation as a critical instrument to attain substantive equality in democracy participation. If enacted, the Bill may have a major impact on the political scene in the run-up to the Goa Assembly polls.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.